Caring for Country: Indigenous and First Nations Learning About Survival, Resilience and Resistance

Abstract

Caring for Country shares and reflects on learning and insights about climate justice challenges and priorities from four leading Australian and American Indigenous and First Nation authors and activists: Tony Birch, Tyson Yunkaporta, Kyle Whyte and Robin Wall Kimmerer. These writers share a common view about the need for non-Indigenous peoples to fully acknowledge and decisively address the many ways in which climate change intensifies ongoing legacies of colonial violence and displacement. They also draw on diverse experience and insights to emphasise the importance of recognising the complexity and fragility of the ecologies in which we live; strengthening awareness that narcissistic choices about the resources we consume are likely to have bitter implications for many other species and for future generations; and of listening carefully to the learning of peoples with many thousands of years of experience of sustainable and resilient ways of life.